Virginia Tech officials are preparing for steep declines in some graduate student enrollment this fall and are offering voluntary severance packages, restructuring departments and analyzing program offerings as university leaders respond to the mounting enrollment pressures faced by colleges and universities across the country.
Provost Julie Ross anticipates a 20% decline in incoming Ph.D. students this fall, she told the university’s board of visitors in June, amid an already realized decline in students seeking master’s degrees.
The university remains in a period of intensified competition for students, declining federal research support and a sharp drop in international graduate student enrollment, she said at the June 1 meeting.
The decline has already started. The total number of graduate students enrolled in the fall of 2025 was down about 5% compared to the year prior, according to data from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, or SCHEV.
Virginia Tech isn’t alone in these challenges. While more undergraduate students are going to college, graduate student enrollment is “under pressure,” Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the National Student Clearinghouse, said in a recent report.
The clearinghouse is a national nonprofit, based in Herndon, that partners with more than 3,600 colleges and universities to provide higher education data and publishes regular reports on college enrollment, mobility and completion.
This year’s report showed that undergraduate enrollment increased to 15.5 million, or about 1.3% over last year, while graduate enrollment held steady — but with some caveats.
Master’s programs, international graduate enrollment and computer and information science graduate programs all saw decreases, according to the report.
“We’re seeing more students enroll in undergraduate programs than we did last spring, but graduate enrollment is under pressure, with declines in both master’s programs and international students,” Holsapple said in a June 4 news release. “The momentum we continue to see in undergraduate enrollment — particularly in certificate programs — does not extend to graduate programs.”
Virginia Tech is seeing many of these trends.
Undergraduate application numbers remain strong, Ross said at the board meeting, but the percentage of admitted students choosing to enroll has declined among both in-state and out-of-state applicants — a phenomenon not isolated to Virginia Tech as students are applying to more universities each year thanks to a more streamlined application process with the Common App and the competitiveness of college admissions, according to SCHEV.
To maintain its current enrollment targets,Virginia Tech has had to extend more admission offers and contend with an unusually high number of students who initially committed but later chose another institution — what university officials call the “melt rate,” according to Ross.
“This is a sign of increasing market competition for the best students, and means that we are making more offers to maintain the size and in-state/out-of-state mix of our incoming class,” Ross said. “As other institutions activate their wait lists to fill their incoming classes, we’re seeing the downstream effects through an unusually high melt rate this year. While we always have some students who accept their offer from Virginia Tech, and then change their mind before August, this year is different.
“Based on what we are seeing in this cycle, we need to quickly adjust our recruiting, admission and scholarship strategies in order to maintain our total enrollment, particularly our out-of-state enrollment,” she warned board members.
Where enrollment is declining
While total enrollment at the university has remained steady — in fact, last fall university officials noted that undergraduate enrollment was approaching its limit for undergraduates at its main campus in Blacksburg — the number of enrolled graduate and professional students was down about 9.5%, from 7,822 in fall 2024 to 7,459 in fall 2025, according to SCHEV data.
Unlike some national projections, Ross said the university expects stable enrollment in master’s degree programs but projects a 20% decline in incoming doctoral students.
Ross noted that peer institutions are reporting similar declines.
The enrollment challenges come as universities nationwide grapple with what higher education leaders call the “enrollment cliff,” a demographic downturn caused by declining birth rates, and some argue, decreased immigration.
University spokesperson Mark Owczarski said part of that decline can be attributed to students showing less interest in certain degree programs, particularly computer science and computer engineering master’s degree programs.
Additionally, the university is feeling the impacts of fewer international students choosing to study in the U.S.
The university is looking at a 20% to 25% decline in international graduate student enrollment specifically, he said.
“There are factors that have contributed to the decline nationwide, including at Virginia Tech,” he said. Much of that is related to student loan funding caps and Trump administration crackdowns on immigration leading to a delay in visas.
“There is a lot of uncertainty in the market,” Owczarski said. “We also see impacts of our changing world, so we have to watch our programs and make sure they are relevant to students, and that’s not a new thing. All of that makes for a very dynamic landscape.”
Tod Massa, director of policy analytics for SCHEV, said Virginia Tech isn’t the only university seeing that trend.
“There’s a lot going on in the world and nationally right now. … International students have been making choices, and 178 other countries [are] seeing that as an opportunity,” he said. “So international students have been finding other opportunities that have not been presented before, and they don’t necessarily feel welcome here right now.”
Overall enrollment was up at two-thirds of Virginia’s six largest public universities last fall, and only three saw declines in graduate students, including Virginia Tech, according to SCHEV data.
Virginia Tech’s graduate student decline was the first since 2020, but George Mason University in Northern Virginia has seen the number of graduate students drop each year since fall 2022, when its total graduate student enrollment topped 12,088 compared to 10,856 in fall 2025 — a 10% drop.
How the university is responding
Virginia Tech is already adjusting its spending ahead of anticipated enrollment changes.
This spring, university leaders adjusted the 2026-27 operating budget to account for $5.4 million less in tuition and fees collected due to lower-than-projected graduate enrollments.
Tuition and fee revenues make up about 67% of the university’s educational and general budget, Owczarski said. Graduate students account for about 6% of those revenues.
“In FY27 budget development, the university recognized the net impact of the graduate enrollment decrease, largely due to international graduate enrollment decreases … and we project another similar impact from Fall 2025 to Fall 2026,” he said in an email.
In a self-assessment administered this spring to Virginia Tech board members — who are facing political upheaval and are in the midst of a presidential search — “enrollment management” was second only to financial sustainability among the top challenges facing the university, according to a presentation by Kim O’Rourke, vice president for policy and governance and secretary to the board.
Many institutions are now competing more aggressively for a shrinking pool of students.
In response, Virginia Tech tentatively plans to invest heavily in recruitment and admissions efforts and reassess scholarship strategies ahead of the next admissions cycle, Ross said.
Current enrollment predictions are preliminary, as students make final decisions over the summer. The university typically collects and reports enrollment data in the late fall.
In response to the more competitive environment, the university is expanding some programs such as a new, fully online MBA program and accelerated bachelor’s-to-master’s degree pathways that allow some students to earn both degrees in four years.
Ross said enrollment in those programs has grown significantly and is helping bolster master’s degree enrollment even as the university sees declining interest in hallmark programs like computer science and computer engineering graduate degree programs.
The university launched a voluntary severance program this spring for tenured faculty members over age 60 with at least 10 years of service in 15 departments across five colleges, a move Ross described as part of a broader effort to align faculty resources with shifting enrollment demand.
Owczarski would not provide the number of faculty members the university hopes will take the program.
He said the voluntary program is not directly linked to declining graduate enrollment, “but rather reflects overall national enrollment trends across disciplines at both the undergraduate and graduate levels,” even as Virginia Tech’s undergraduate enrollment continues to climb.
“Taking this action will allow us to remain strong (in terms of offering what students seek) and achieve greater flexibility for future opportunities. We believe this is a smart way to run a world-class teaching and research university. It is very early in the process and it will take several months before we know how many individuals are interested in this voluntary program,” he said in an email.
The board of visitors also approved a resolution to close the Department of Religion and Culture, housed within the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, effective July 1, 2027. The department’s degree program and graduate certificate program will end, and one minor program will transfer to the Department of Sociology.
“We are adjusting our faculty distribution to better align our staffing and expertise with program demand,” Ross said.
The university is also bolstering some undergraduate programs in hopes of remaining competitive and attracting continued interest in enrolling at the land-grant school.
Beginning this fall, Virginia Tech will offer a new artificial intelligence minor, open to undergraduate students across all majors. The program combines technical AI instruction with coursework focused on ethical and societal impacts and includes specialized tracks in areas ranging from arts and social sciences to advanced computing.
The board of visitors also opted to keep Living Learning Programs in place on campus for students in part, in hopes that students admitted to such a program actually enrolls in the fall.
The “melt rate” for LLC students is 6.3% compared to 14.3% for all admitted students, Ross told board members.
The undergraduate student representative on the board argued for these programs, which are intentional communities where students interested in particular subjects or in the same program live together, in part due to their possible impact on students’ desires to attend Virginia Tech.
“When looking for where to get a respectable degree, there are many options. Anymore, it is a tougher competition for talent at a time … when we are already headed into the enrollment cliff and should carefully calculate anything that we might do to narrow our applicant pool,” wrote Thomas Feely, a senior majoring in construction engineering and management. “If Virginia Tech can continue to offer an unmatched student experience both in and out of the classroom, we will be the school at the top of the list of those seeking an affordable, accessible, land-grant institution grounded in principled leadership.”
Though undergraduate student enrollment is up at Virginia Tech and nationally, ongoing international student enrollment declines could begin to have a broader impact, some researchers say.
Massa said that students are continuing to explore alternatives to traditional four-year undergraduate programs such as part-time or online programs.
Owczarski cautioned that these types of changes — in enrollment, programs and strategies — are not new in higher education.
“When it comes to international students, we are looking at data points and this occurrence in the past year,” he said. “This is a relatively new thing. Before we call it a trend, we’ll need a little bit more time.”
He characterized pivots in programs and strategy as “the nature of the industry.”
“We have to be relevant to our students. This is yet one more thing that is creating these dynamics,” he said.
Ross said additional details on enrollment trends, faculty alignment efforts and research initiatives will be presented to the board of visitors in August.
